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Loved their early singles i.e. Remember Me, Carrion when I was young - never bought an album though. Are they worth getting into? I'm a bit torn between feeling euphoric from a band who sing "Sometimes I wish protesting was sexy on a Saturday night!" and feeling uncomfortable with that song that apparently patronised Eastern Europeans.

is one of my absolute favourites of the last 15 years - one of the greatest British debut albums of all time IMO. First time I heard it I genuinely thought it was the arrival of a new Smiths/Joy Division. Sadly nothing they've done since has come remotely close to equalling it.

But I'm not really sure what skiffle pop is meant to sound like. See automatik's post RE Arcade Fire. I don't really see how they are selling any kind of image, let alone contriving a false one. They just do stuff that they like.

Although I concede that their last few albums are a bit patchy. There are moments of brilliance on each, and I think Open Season is just as good as the debut, although completely different.
Love their whole aesthetic too.
Top 5 BSP tracks anyone?

Think I have a special affinity with them as they're pretty affiliated with Lewes, and my old Math's teacher is Woody's (the drummer) brother. Anyway, they're one of those bands that seems to have an absolutely fanatical following, probably for all the right reasons. Valhalla was a bit patchy, but all their albums hae something different to offer. I'll echo that Decline is probably my favourite, but I've definitely got a soft spot for DYLRM?

In a weird way, they're the closest thing this era has to a ('90s) Manic Street Preachers, Pulp or the Smiths: cool, literate, outsider British indie band that used to wear uniforms on stage and you'd own six of their t-shirts. I have to agree that each album has generally been weaker than the last - after a couple of streamed listens and one live show, I never even bought the last one :(

Interesting fact that you probably already know: Win Butler spent three months following BSP around their Canadian tour, a year prior to the release of Funeral. They influenced Arcade Fire, not the other way around.

I guess I quite like the fact that they're a bit of a hidden gem, and it means it is possible to see them at tiny gigs. It's the same for another of my favourite bands, Trail of Dead - although they are definitely a band of diminishing returns!

I listened to it over and over again and just couldn't get bored of it. As ThirstyDog says above they were like the best thing to happen to british indie in 20 odd years. I saw them shortly after that at the (now defunct) Venue in Edinburgh which to this day is atill one of the best gigs i've ever been to. They opened with " A Wooden Horse" and came onstage in WW2 military attire with the stage littered with foliage and large stuffed animals, but it was all about the music and they played with an incredible intensity.
Sadly their 2nd album seemed a bit watered down, too safe and straight forward and nothing like the genius of the debut where insane freakouts like "Apologies To Insect Life" jostled for your attention alongside beautiful poignant piano led numbers like "The Lonely".
The third album was a bit better but still nowhere near 'The Decline of' and i haven't even bothered with the last two.
But yeah they started out strange and quirky playing gigs in caves and abandoned airfields and doing a collaborative cover version 7" with the Wurzels. I dont know what happened but it seemed they had their balls cut off and lost their sense of fun and adventure which affected their ability to write an album as great as that debut and for a moment they were as bland as someone like the pigeon detectives.
Shame.

Decent third, fairly dull fourth, the soundtrack albums are good and the most recent album is mostly a "return to form" although it does sag a tad in the middle.

As other people have said they are an excellent live band, first time I saw them they were slightly disappointing (some overzealous security and baffling fence at the front of the stage in the QMU of all places, seemed to affect the mood of both them and the crowd) but the second time I saw them it was a fantastic gig.

I first heard them via a CD with the short lived but excellent X-Ray magazine. A session version of Carrion and it was cool - a bit quirky but still something my 14 year old head could understand.

I bought Decline of... and fell in love with it. That record is my joint favourite of all time (along with Turn On The Bright Lights). I love how it starts all wordless acapella, then spends two tracks going apeshit with the noise, and then goes incredibly chilled for the rest of it, all the way up to the epicness of Lately.

In general I love how the band can sound big, powerful, heavy and even abrasive but the vocals always sound like he's singing to you gently in a small room.

Open Season is nice but overall doesn't grab me in the same way - too many of the tracks lack that edge of genius, even if they're still fairly good tunes. Big fan of the last three tracks though - The Land Beyond is beautiful, True Adventures is epic but powerful in a similar way to Lately and how many other bands could write a song about their "favourite foremost coastal antartic shelf"?

DYLRM came out half way through my first year of uni and I listened to it constantly for quite a while. The production is a bit odd, but quite a few tracks are totally brilliant - it was at this point they looked like they could find a wider audience but it didn't happen. I think the entire album works together ok, although this may be because I listened to it so much at a point in my life where I was smoking a shitton of weed.

I saw them live twice in that year and while they were good they weren't as weird as I'd hoped and they lacked that indescribable thing that had made me fall in love with them initially.

I remember a couple of years after the debut came out, (around the time I first gained the ability to spend hours and hours on the internet but before I started wasting all my time on here...) I came across this quote from a Rolling Stone article, dismissing the entire Reading line up (other than BSP):

“Fuck this puerile drivel, we’re going to see British Sea Power... All of them have crazy acid-fried stares, the bass player is wearing tree branches on his head and one deliriously psycho-delic tune concludes with singer Yan beating on the drum-kit with a large stuffed owl. British Sea Power rule.”

I think I've listened to Man of Aran once and decided it woudl be great in the right context. Should probably put it on my phone and listen to it on a train journey. When Valhalla Dancehall came out I really liked Who's In Control but the rest of it totally failed to grab me and I've never listened to Machineries of Joy although this thread has convinced me to revisit the former and give the latter a try.